The importance of repentance, atonement, and forgiveness is at the core of Exhalation. Tellingly, the first story, “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate,” adopts a fable-like structure, allowing the story to spell things out for the reader without feeling too on the nose; it suits the style. Fuwaad ends that story telling the caliph that the most important thing he knows is “Nothing erases the past. There is repentance, there is atonement, and there is forgiveness. That is all, but that is enough” (36). This sentiment continues throughout the rest of the stories.

We go on to see numerous characters experience the importance of these tenets. Other major examples include: Lionel Dacey eventually devoting himself to fatherhood in “Dacey’s Patent Automatic Nanny,” Jijingi seeking forgiveness for betraying his people’s cultural traditions, the narrator trying to repair his relationship with his daughter in “The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling,” and Nat using her money to help Dana find closure in “Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom.”

Since repentance, atonement, and forgiveness feature so heavily in the stories, Chiang is able to develop a detailed and nuanced understanding of those themes.